User blog:CuteLunaMoon/Chapter 8: Not ready to die
WARNING: This chapter contains violence and sexual contents. Read at your own risk The sky is clear but the moon is covered by some sort of cloud, making it looks like the retina of an infected man. I look over the expanse, bathed in the pale moonlit and see many tiny dots of eerie lights similar to the lamp in the hut. Perhaps, If I trot along this stony beach, I could find someone. Look at the sea, I see in the fog the masts of some whaling ships. Somewhere in that far harbour, comes the wailing of a dog. The sound is taken up by another dog, and then another and another. I walk fast to the source of the sound til my foot hit something. I bow down and find a dead body. "What manner of man is this, or what manner of creature is it in the semblance of man?" I stammer. Beneath me lies a corpse of a fish man with a harpoon in his hand. I have seen all sort of beast but this is just too irregular. Its face is visibly man but it has big, bulgy eyes that don't shut and the head is covered in banacles and seaweed. It is bipedal but there are also fins like a fish. Its pale blue skin reflect light, as if covered by small, rough scales. Its neck even have gills. I inspect closer and see grievous jagged wounds on the barnacle-covered abdomen of the fish man, perhaps caused by a Beast Cutter . The assumed dead coughs blood and startles me. It's struggling! Suddenly he turns towards me with pleading fishy watery eyes and mutters " The murderers... They have come back... Byrgenwerth. .. Blasphemous murderers... By the wrath of mother Kos..." He coughs again before finishing his words. I don't know what sort of man or creature is this but he's wounding and he worships mother Kos. I open my last Blood Vial and tuck the syringe in and inject the fish man with blood. Then, I drag him to the hut where he could rest on the worn bed. After taking blood, the Fishman wounds seem to heal a little bit. Perhaps he is one of the denizens of this hamlet, which seems to be claimed by the sea. I let the Fishman rest and go outside. " Must you go?" The Fishman suddenly says" I owe you once smooth skin. You look like one of them but you smell like one of us. The murderers are out there, take this with you" He hands me his harpoon. I nod, say a thank, and quickly depart . The murderers look like me. Perhaps they were sent in this nightmare along with me. I heard gunfire and dog bark very close by and quickly move in the sound direction. Suddenly a dog-fish hybrid fly passes me crashing to the nearby barnacle-covered hut. It whines and convulses in extreme pain as its head is twisted backwards. " Ah-hah. The Green Willow wench" I am startled by an unfamiliar and disturbing voice. Before my eyes stand a half-naked Choir maniac and a dozen of his church hunter comrades. On the pond they stand, several dead Fish-men are floating. " I'm sick of these fishes, get that wench" Shout the Choir. A church hunter advance at me but I quickly drive my harpoon in his knee so he painfully backsteps. Another advance and swing his breaking wheel at me but I easily dodge the hefty wooden wheel. But just as I turn, one of them has already at my right side and kick me in the belly. The pain was so intense tears swell up in my eyes and I let out a painful scream. I gently squeeze my right eye and an arcane rock soars. The meteor hit the attacker with an explosion and he crashes into a nearby hut. When he fells to the ground, his left-hand detaches from his shoulder and blood spills everywhere. Like a well-done fish, his eyes bulge out and blood drips from his nostril. I look at a frightened, visibly trembling, hunter nearby and squeeze my eye again but nothing comes out this time. He sighs a relief and resumes his charging at me, knowing well that I cannot shoot that arcane spell again. I throw my dagger at him, impaling his shoulder. From behind, a staggering hammer hit my back and I collapse into the ankle-deep water. One of them pull my hair and lift my face from the water. Then, two of them hold each of my hand. " That puterelle murdered Ronald. Kill her" Shouts an executioner. His high-pitched voice sounds like a dog barking under his gold Ardeo . " Not before we have fun with her first," Says the half-naked mad Choir as he closes in " She killed me in the waking world. I want the wench to feel the humiliation while we rape her in front of her companions". I wait for him come close enough to my range and try to kick his crotch but he quickly dodges aside. " You can't use the same trick on me twice. Ha-ha" The mad Choir grabs my right leg and proceeds to remove my cloak." Let's see what she hid under her clothes" With all of my anger, I headbutt the jerk and he was so focused on undressing me he did not see that coming. The headbutt hit his nose and I'm pretty sure I have cracked it. Blood streams from the maniac nose. He angrily rises and slaps me. I feel the salty blood on my tongue. The Choir shoves a rag into my mouth and pulls out a dagger and violently tears down my attire, he cuts me in several places. The other hunters laugh like wild animals pointing at my exposed breast." This wench would make a fortune in a Cathedral Ward brothel." A sudden yellow lightning struck one of the church hunters. From a dark alley, a massive shark man charges at them with frightening speed, followed by at least two dozens of fish men armed with harpoons and cleavers. The church hunters scatter quickly and I pull out of the grab of the two hunters who is holding me. Screams and gunfires echoes behind as I run into a flooded valley and behind me, the mad Choir. He angrily lashes his Threaded Cane at me but fortunately, the tip of the barbed thread slightly miss my belly. I try to run but he's faster in the knee-deep alley and the second lash hit my left lap. The threaded blades cut into my flesh and I, again, fall into the water below. I was soaked wet and try to stand up but the mad Choir jump on me and drown me. " I'll rape your corpse while it's still warm" He shouts maniacally. I am suffocating and try to hold my breath. I helplessly struggle against the muscular Choir but in vain. I suddenly feel something writhing in under my cloak. The slug ! It's struggling in the salt water. In my last dying breath, I free the poor creature so it may survive. Suddenly, the water is filled by a vast stretch of darkness with tiny dots like the night stars and a sudden pressure along with long tendrils come from below pushing me out of the water. I draw my breath hastily and painfully get to my feet. The sudden assault knocks the mad Choir up a few feet in the air. He lands crashing into the nearby puddle splattering water everywhere. " You pint-sized betrayer. How dare you? " He stammers as he gets back on his feet.The tendrils have done an immense amount of damage to his body: his right arm is almost dismembered, only connected to his body by a thin layer of skin. Blood is streaming from the wound. He draws heavily breath between the coughs as if some of his ribs have been broken. And he must have dropped his Threaded Cane in the blast. I catch the writhing slug, which is struggling in the salt water, and put it back to my cloak. Heavily wounded, the maniac retreats to higher ground. Hopefully, I see a paddle, grab hold of it and follow the mortally wounded Choir. I want to end this once and for all. He must have seen me follow as he pulls out another dagger with his left hand and charges at me. I hold the paddle defensively and swat his dagger aside. I close in, thrust the paddle in his chest. I was right, the arcane blast from the slug, whatever it is, has broken two or three of his ribs. He falls to the ground and blood streams from his mouth. I give him a kick in the crotch with my unwounded leg. The mad Choir whines and begs for mercy. I pick up the dagger and cut his throat open. I watch as the mad Choir dies. My grin is the last thing the maniac see. But I wonder if he could actually see from his blindfolded cap. I consider drawing his blood into a vial but then throw the idea away cause his blood could be as disgusting as he was. I search his trouser and find some more throwing daggers. This maniac seemed to prefer throwing daggers to firearms. I take the writhing slug out, pour some fresh water from my waterskin on it and observe the mollusc. What in the world happened earlier was unearthly, and this creature was more than an irregular pet. The slug seems calmer now thanks to the quick washing. Just after I applied some willow bark patches to my wounds, I hear screams nearby. I walk to the source of the scream and after a and turn to see a Fishman being impaled by a church hunter with his massive Ludwig's holy blade combined with its sheath. The church hunter is accompanied by an executioner who dons a gold Ardeo, the one who demanded me dead earlier. I throw a dagger at the hunter, thanks to my luck, it struck him in the jaws. The enraged hunter removes the dagger from his mouth, unsheaths the short sword from the holy blade and lunges at me, followed by a charging executioner. To their surprise, I quickly pull out the blue slug and lightly squeeze it. Right in front of my eyes, a vast dark starry night appears and from the bottomless abyss, tendrils shoot out and lash at the charging foes with great speed . Like what happened with the mad Choir earlier, the closest hunter is knocked off his feet, he flies in an arc like a ragged doll and lands motionless on the ground. The executioner is knocked down on his knee, I quickly close the gap and drive my fist into the abdomen of the open foe. I grab his viscera with my iron grip and rip them out right before his eyes. I'm bathed in his blood and feel the raw euphoria of the warmth of blood. The executioner collapses, his last words are, if I'm not wrong, "foul beast"... Swatting his guts and liver aside from my torn attire, I come to the knocked down church hunter and find that the man has died with his eyes open. Blood's dripping from his mouth and from broken limbs. I remove the sheath form the Fishman and take the dead hunter sword. I undress the dead and take their clothes for some proper clothing and I find a waterskin in the executioner garb and a small silver bell in the dead hunter garb. A molotov cocktail explodes violently next to me while I'm inspecting the fine silverware and covers me in its raging flame. I jump into a nearby belly-deep puddle to extinguish the fire. I turn and see a middle-aged Choir member, in full Choir set, charges at me with his Thread Cane. Though I can't seem to summon another volley of tendrils, I point the arcane slug at him and he quickly takes several back steps, as if he knows how dangerous the living weapon is and how far the tendrils can extend. I take the chance to run but alas, I come to a dead end. The Choir catches up with me not long after and also take out a white slug from his garb. His slug is quite different from mine but I sense a greater danger lies within the mollusc. The old Choir holds his slug with two hands over his head. Then, the cosmos appears, right above his head, and with it, many small glowing stars. It is so beautiful and so frightening. Out of the blue, the giant shark man I saw earlier jumps down from a house and slams the Choir with his massive ship anchor. The slam interrupts the Choir channelling and pulverizes him into a fine bloody pulp. The shark-man then leaps on the rooftop and continues its pursuit. If it had not been for the giant shark-man intervention, I would have been killed. While I'm busy looting and draining blood from the dead, many Fish-men have gathered around me. When I look up, they have surrounded me. One of them step up, with the head of the two dead Choirs and say in a voice that sound like broken glass" You have helped us kill the Byrgenwerth scholars, you are our friend." It was a relief, I thought they were about to attack me. The Fishman carry the dead away and offer me some bandages. I ask them if they see any beast-like hunters recently but they say they don't. The fish men represent themselves as children of Kos, much to my delight. They explain to me that I was brought here by the will of mother Kos, but the transfer also bought several ' Byrgenwerth Scholars ' to the village, too. So she made the storm to sweep them away, but they found shelter so she guided me and her children to drive them off. One odd-looking fishman says that what I find might lies in the realm below an dthat the cosmos is just above our head. It's rather confusing to hear all of this but after the fight, I'm quite tired and I accept their offer to stay with them for a night. When I wake up, the moon still hang low on the cloudy sky, unchanged. I'm pretty sure it's more than just an eight-hour-slumber and yet it's still dark outside. I am treated as a guess in the Fishing Hamlet. When I walk accross a Giant Fishman , he's eating something. When I look closer, much to my horror, it's the executioner corpse. Hearing my sound, the Giant turns its whale-like face towards my direction. "Hey I... uh, think you've got a little bit of brain caught in your teeth. Is this sort of... dining... common here?" I mutter, trying to be as nice as possible while taking some back step. "Er...That one's, uh, all yours....Don't let me spoil your meal." The fishman which I saved earlier walks by, takes my hand and walks me away. He then turns and says to the giant "Should hang that, taste better after two days." After a few minutes of walking in the shadow of the barnacle-covered houses, he asks me:" You sure you don't wanna stay with us? It's very dangerous down there." " Yeah, I don't think I'd make a pretty mermaid and I'd love to stay smoothskin longer" We walk to the village entrance, where some residents of the Hamlet stand there waiting for us. They bid me farewell, instruct me how to get down to the realm below without having to deal with the church assassin who hunt down hunters, and give me a bag full of food. I bid them farewell, too and go to the Astral Clocktower. It is strangely identical to the old astral clock tower in the Cathedral Ward. Even more odd, when I inspect the water near the clock tower, I see the Cathedral Ward below. Under the old structure, which inexplicably rise from the water, I open the food bag and quite happy to find that it's dried kelp and salted fishes. Then,I read a few chapters of Sophia's diary,hoping to find any clues about my current whereabouts. Category:Blog posts